A Record of Changing My Mind

Publishing an opinion creates a small trap.

Once the words are public, they begin to feel permanent. We defend them longer than we should, because changing our mind looks like conceding that the earlier version of us was an idiot. (Often, he was.)

A personal website makes this especially awkward. Articles remain searchable. Old arguments sit beside newer ones, like holiday photos you forgot you were tagged in. A confident statement from years earlier can reappear, neatly stripped of every bit of context that once made it sound reasonable.

The obvious defence is to publish only timeless certainties.

That would produce a very short website. Possibly a blank one.

Most worthwhile ideas are provisional. They reflect the evidence, experience and assumptions available at the time. Some age well. Others curdle.

I would rather preserve that development than quietly bury it.

An old article need not be silently rewritten until it appears that I always held my current, obviously superior view. That destroys provenance — and fools nobody, least of all future me.

Nor must it remain untouched as a monument to consistency.

A better approach is a dated retrospective note:

• what I still believe;
• what changed;
• what I underestimated (usually plenty);
• what experience subsequently taught me.

The original article remains part of the record. The note becomes evidence that the thinking continued.

This matters because changing one’s mind is usually described as a character flaw. We prefer leaders who appear certain, experts who sound definitive and public figures whose positions fit comfortably on a placard.

But consistency is only a virtue when the conditions that produced it still hold.

New evidence should create new conclusions.

Experience should alter judgement.

A person who never changes their mind may be admirably principled. They may also have quietly stopped learning some time last century.

There is a difference between revising a view and rewriting history. A retrospective should not pretend the earlier position was something cleverer than it was. It should state plainly: this is what I thought, and this is why I now think differently.

That honesty dents the appearance of authority. It also happens to be the thing that builds trust.

And it makes for a more useful legacy. A collection of polished conclusions tells readers what someone believed. A record of revision shows how they reasoned — mistakes, U-turns and all.

The second is more human and, I suspect, more valuable.

I do not want this site to prove that I was right.

I want it to show that I was paying attention.

• #thinking
• #writing
• #open-mindedness

@online{byatt2026-arecordofchangingmymind,
  author  = {Stephen Byatt},
  title   = {A Record of Changing My Mind},
  year    = {2026},
  date    = {2026-04-06},
  url     = {https://learningoutloud.stephenbyatt.com/blog/a-record-of-changing-my-mind/},
  urldate = {2026-04-06},
  note    = {Learning Out Loud}
}